ESC Chicago Keynote Makes Case For Time Travel

Karen Field reports that theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett is on a lifelong mission to build a time machine. His theory of a time machine, based on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, involves creating a circulating beam of light and exploiting the energy to produce a gravitational field, at RF Designline:

Ronald Mallett, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Connecticut, gave a mind-bending keynote speech on the physics of time travel to an enthralled audience at the Embedded Systems Conference here Tuesday morning, describing how black holes, blue giant stars, and worm holes (tunnels that connect the mouths of black holes)—some of the strangest things in the Universe—illustrate (at least in theory) the potential for time travel some day.

And that day, Mallett claimed, is not so far in the future as one might think.

“Time travel one of mankind’s oldest fantasies. But is it really possible? All of us have wondered what’s going to happen in the future, and we’ve contemplated the question, ‘What if I could back and change something in my past?” said Mallet. “I am here to tell you we are on the threshold of making time travel a reality, and it’s based on real physics.”

Author of “Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality,” Mallett explained how the trauma of his father’s unexpected death when he was just ten and H.G. Well’s book The Time Machine set him on a mission to travel back in time and save his father’s life. “Thankfully, I was astute enough not to tell other people about my plan—they were already worried about me,” Mallett.

That mission became a lifelong preoccupation, though Mallet says that for many years he used “black holes” as his cover story. “Black holes were considered a crazy idea, but legitimate crazy. That’s what helped me survive academia,” he said. “It wasn’t until I got tenure and was made a full professor that I came out of the time travel closet.”…